Side-by-side photos of a forearm: on the left a faded small star tattoo, on the right realistic pink roses with purple leaves on the inner forearm.

Pink roses on a forearm, shown beside a faded star tattoo

Realism · Forearm · Colour · Photo

The left panel shows a small, faded tattoo of outlined stars in pink and yellow with a swirling ribbon motif on the inner forearm. The right panel shows a larger, realistic tattoo of two pink roses with dark purple leaves, shaded to suggest depth and form. The two photographs are shown side by side on a dark background, with the skin tone and framing kept similar.

Realism Botanical Forearm Rose Leaf Star Swirl Before and after

Find an artist for this

Take it to an artist as a reference. A good artist will make it yours rather than copy someone else's tattoo.

A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The lamp room at Hollin Pit smelled of paraffin and wet wool, and Dora Keane had learned to read a man's mood from how he hung his lamp on the hook. Tom Ridley hung his like a man expecting bad news. She brought him the tea can anyway and sat on the upturned crate beside him while the shift bell went off somewhere far below them.

Keep reading

He had been carrying a bit of paper in his top pocket for a fortnight, folded so often the creases had gone soft. It was from the Co-operative lodge committee, a list of names for the new allotment ground above the wagonway, and his was third. He kept touching it through his shirt as if it might leave. Dora had stitched a star onto the lining of his cap the winter his brother went under, and she had never told him why stars, only that the Ridley girls could be trusted with a needle and a pattern book.

By the time the cage rang for the first gang, Tom had decided. He would take the paper to his mother, who had grown roses in a tin bath on the back step since before the strike, and he would ask her for cuttings. Dora said the roses would never take in this soot. Tom said that was what the purple was for, the dark leaves that could drink the grime and keep going. They argued it out the length of the pit yard, and neither of them won.

In April the bushes came up on the allotment ground in a row of stubborn pink, and Tom stood at the gate with his cap pushed back, the folded paper finally gone to nothing in his pocket. Dora laughed at him for crying over a few thorns, and then she cried too.